Hyacinth

They called each other Son and Mother, as if they had no other names. As if they were people in a fairy tale.

‘What’s for supper, Mother?’

‘Wait and see, Son.’

Later, she placed a hot dish of baked onions on the table. She gave the girl a look which said, ‘I expect you are too stuck up for this plain food. I thought as much with your pearl necklace and your overnight things in a music case.’

Apparently this rustic dish was to be supper – just the onions. She served her son first, then turned to the girl. It was as if she was saying, ‘You’d better like this hard food or lump it. There’s nothing else. He’s my boy and hasn’t sown all his wild oats yet.’

Just to make conversation the girl said, ‘Have you got any animals?’

The mother looked secretive and left it to her son to explain that although there was a pig-sty outside there was no longer a pig. And that there used to be a horse which he rode as a boy, but now there were no animals.

‘Oh, right,’ said the girl. She wondered how she came to be in this shadowy room with its one small window. She did not know if she would survive intact so far from London. He had brought her to his mother’s rural den. How would Mother get on if she were suddenly set down in Waterloo station or King’s Cross or wherever the trains went into London from this benighted place? She would probably get into hysterics. Here, of course, she knew every ancient stain on the wallpaper and every old lilac leaf which helped to block out the light.

Faded old lilac grew too in the cracks of the disused pig-sty.

‘Everyone used to have a pig-sty. Haven’t you ever seen one before?’ He had laughed delightedly, drawn by her exotic towny ignorance. She had hardly ever seen a pig. Alive, anyway.

Mother had quite small eyes. On looking again, the girl thought she had strange eyelids. It was as if they had not been cut open properly at the corners. She hoped it was not a genetic thing that would pass onto her grandchildren. It was not attractive. Her son’s eyelids were not like it. Mother’s small eyes were very bright in there, and very blue.

Her son had wide open eyes and looked nothing like his mother, thank goodness. He must take after his father. There was a picture on the sooty mantelpiece.

‘Is that your dad?’ she asked. He took the photograph, wiped the frame on his corduroy trousers, and handed it to her. She looked at it closely. It was quite a small photograph: you could barely see the eyelids. She thought they were all right but wasn’t sure. She could do with a magnifying glass.

‘He went down with his ship.’

The picture at once gathered to itself a sad aura of abandonment. Unlike his wife this man had left their hovel and gone to sea. And then drowned, never to come back in the flesh, though he still was here; at least in his image.

The son polished the frame and put the picture back on the mantelpiece. ‘We’ll go in the back room,’ he told his mother. The old woman shrugged and began clearing the table.

Glad to get away into another room, the girl wished they did not have to leave the door ajar. It irritated her. The room was stuffy. There was a lumpy sofa against the wall which she sat on carefully.

‘Cheer up,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some music.’ There was a little pile of singles in the corner. In the cupboard-darkness of this back room the words of the song were clear – Every breath you take. Every move you make…

She shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. ‘What’s your mother’s name?’ she asked. He was looking through the pile for something else to play. ‘Hyacinth,’ he answered.

‘Hyacinth?’ She was incredulous. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. Why do you ask?’ He did not like this questioning of his mother’s name. She would have to mollify him.

‘It’s quite unusual,’ she said. ‘For a name.’

She thought about the old woman’s eyes which were certainly blue, but small and glinty. And now the old girl was standing outside the door looking through the crack where it stood ajar. ‘I’m going to bed soon,’ she announced. ‘I’ll show Madam up to her room.’

‘She’s got a name, Mother.’ He sounded angry. These two women, Christ. ‘I’m going for a wander round,’ he said. ‘A breath of fresh air.’

The girl followed his mother up the narrow twisting staircase. She had to touch the wall for safety; there was no banister. There was only one bedroom upstairs.

The bed, which was not a single and not a double, filled most of the room. It had an eiderdown, lumpy like the sofa. When she was alone the girl opened the window and sweet air rushed in. It was so quiet she could hear the silence like voices.

Waiting until she heard the mother clump back down the stairs, she undressed and got into bed, prepared to stay awake and wait for him to creep up in the night. She wasn’t sure whether he would risk coming or not, but she must stay awake in case. She passed the time thinking about the songs he had played for her, trying to remember the words. There was one she had really liked and never heard before – Put your sweet lips to the phone, or something. She tried to keep awake, tried to remember the words. She was nearly asleep when she heard the stair creak.

They had never been in bed together and naked before. It was a shock. Still, they must be very quiet, they would have to make love soundlessly. She would love forever the taste of the onions in their mouths and the stale close smell of the eiderdown. ‘Mouse,’ he whispered in her ear. And then his weight was so heavy she felt like a mouse caught in a trap, almost ready to be killed but not quite.

After he had gone, she dreamt. In her dream a unicorn stood by the pig-sty. Everyone had a unicorn in the garden, they were as common as pigs. This unicorn was a shy but helpful and intuitive creature. It brought her offerings stuck on its horn – newspaper cuttings, an unripe apple, a pair of diaphanous and once glamorous knickers with the elastic gone (this last a special treasure it had had for ages). Every time, it said, ‘Will this help?’ It did not actually speak in words; its thoughts spoke. She was so grateful for its proffered help and friendship she gave it her pearl necklace and it went off. The dream was called Pearls before Swine.

In the morning she went down to breakfast, worried about a bloodstain on the bed sheet. Breakfast was laid out and everything waiting. Even the marmalade was waiting. It was as if the old woman and breakfast had been up all night.

‘That sofa wants chucking out,’ said the son, as he sat down. ‘Is this breakfast, Mother?’

‘We always have Cornish wafers and marmalade,’ she said. The Cornish wafers smelt exactly like the dampish eiderdown. ‘We always have this for breakfast.’ She spread a wafer with marmalade.

‘Even though we don’t live in Cornwall,’ said her son. ‘Mother, they’re stale. I’ll make some toast. Would you like some toast?’ he asked the girl, ‘instead of stale Cornish wafers.’

The mother stared at her with her bright, half-buried eyes.

‘No thank you,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll just have this.’

He went off to make toast, a cup of tea in his hand.

The girl felt still half asleep. Everyone got up so early in this house. It was hardly light.

The smell of toast was like a high note. He offered her a bite and she took a tiny one.

‘Is everyone peaky in your family?’ asked the mother.

‘She’s got a fair skin. She’s not peaky, Mother. Come on, let’s go for a walk if you’ve finished.’

The mother started clearing the table. It was as if she had only a few things to do, like clearing the table and putting things into biscuit tins. As if she could not do other things any more, as if her life had been choreographed, like a boring dance, thought the girl. That I will never learn to do.

As they walked to the river they could hear the noise of the waterfall. Approaching it, the spray hit their faces.

‘Hyacinth is a nice name,’ she said over the noise of the waterfall. ‘Do you think it suits her?’ She knew it did not.

‘Don’t let’s talk about that.’

He took her further on into a copse. ‘What can I smell here?’ she asked.

‘Wild garlic.’

‘Oh, right. Wild garlic.’

They made love again, passion giving them a quick expertise. It was too cold to undress.

‘We’d better get back,’ she said. ‘Your mother will wonder.’

They made their way back to the house: running, walking, jumping over streams.

She noticed in the hedge as they drew close to the building, small blue flowers watching her with their bright little bird eyes.